Like the fruits, when cooler weather and frosts arrive, we too are braced and ripened..

September 14. 

High, gusty winds, with dust and a little rain (more or less for two or three days). These powerful gusts fill all the air with dust, concealing the earth and sky. 

P. M. — To Cliffs via Hubbard's Bath. 

The Spiranthes cernua has a sweet scent like the clethra's. 

The mountain sumach appears to bear quite sparingly. Its berries are a hoary crimson and not bright like those of the smooth. Also they are in looser masses. They are, perhaps, a little later, but I think ripe now. 

I see in the swamp under the Cliffs the dark, decaying leaves of the skunk-cabbage, four or five spreading every way and so flat and decayed as to look like a fungus or mildew, making it doubtful at first what plant it is; but there is the sharp green bud already revealed in the centre between the leaf-stalks, ready to expand in the spring. 

This wind has strewn the Fair Haven Hill-side with apples. I think that fully three quarters of all are on the ground. Many trees are almost entirely stripped, the whole crop lying in a circular form beneath, yet hard and green. Others on the hillside have rolled far down. The farmers will be busy for some time gathering these windfalls. 

The winds have come to shake the apple trees prematurely, making fruit (for pies) cheap, I trust, against Thanksgiving or Cattle-Show. Not only apples and other fruit, but a great many green as well as withered leaves, strew the ground under almost all kinds of trees. 

I notice of late the green or ripe pods of the Orchidaceoe, — some for a long time, — including gymnodenia, lady's-slipper, etc.; pods full of a fine, dust-like seed. The dusty-seeded Orchidaceoe. 

The yellow lily (Nuphar advena) fruit, now green and purplish, is ripening under water, full of yellow seeds 

The white lily, when stripped of the blackened and decaying petals, etc., is of this form:  

Even the tough-twigged mocker-nut, yet green, is blown off in some places. I bring home a twig with three of its great nuts together, as big as small apples, and children follow and eye them, not knowing what kind of fruit it is. 

Like the fruits, when cooler weather and frosts arrive, we too are braced and ripened. When we shift from the shady to the sunny side of the house, and sit there in an extra coat for warmth, our green and leafy and pulpy thoughts acquire color and flavor, and perchance a sweet nuttiness at last, worth your cracking. 

Now all things suggest fruit and the harvest, and flowers look late, and for some time the sound of the flail has been heard in the barns. 

They are catching pigeons nowadays. Coombs has a stand west of Nut Meadow, and he says that he has    just shot fourteen hawks there, which were after the pigeons. 

I have one which he has shot within a day or two and calls a pigeon hawk.

Audubon's "Pigeon Hawk" [Merlin]
"Adult male with the cere greenish-yellow, the feet pale orange, the upper parts light bluish-grey, each feather with a black central line; lower parts reddish or yellowish-white, the breast and sides with large oblong brown spots; tibial feathers light red, streaked with blackish-brown. Female with the cere and legs greenish-yellow, the upper parts dark greyish-brown, the lower pale red, spotted as in the male."

•  It is about twenty inches in alar extent. 
• Above dark-slate or brownish with the edges, i. e. tips, of the feathers (especially of wing-coverts) rufous. 
• The primaries and secondaries dark or blackish brown, barred with black, and only  some white concealed on the inner vanes near the base. 
• Wings beneath white or whitish, thickly barred with dark. 
• Scapulars with white spots. 
• Head much mutilated, but no "black spots" visible, but apparently the dark brown mixed or edged with rufous. 
• Cere, etc., said to have been green.
•  Beneath brownish-white, centred with brown, with a darker line through that. 
• Femorals still more rustyish brown, with central dashes. 
• Legs yellowish. 
• Tail slate, with four black bars half an inch or more wide; the edge slate, with a very narrow edging of white; beneath the slate is almost white. 

What kind of hawk is this? 

I can learn nothing from Wilson and Nuttall. The latter thinks that neither the pigeon nor sparrow hawk is found here !! 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 14, 1859


The mountain sumach appears to bear quite sparingly. Its berries are a hoary crimson. See August 28, 1853 ("The berries of the dwarf sumach are not a brilliant crimson, but as yet, at least, a dull sort of dusty or mealy crimson"); October 2, 1856 ("The mountain sumach now a dark scarlet quite generally.")

Spiranthes  cernus
[nodding ladies' tressses orchid]

The Spiranthes cernua has a sweet scent like the clethra's. See September 2, 1856 ("Spiranthes cernua, apparently some days at least, though not yet generally; a cool, late flower, growing with fringed gentian"); September 15, 1856 ("Spiranthes cernua in prime.")

The farmers will be busy for some time gathering these windfalls. See September 3, 1859 ("A strong wind, which blows down much fruit."); September 13, 1852 ("Yesterday, it rained all day, with considerable wind, which has strewn the ground with apples and peaches, and, all the country over, people are busy picking up the windfalls"); September 17, 1858 ("The orchards are strewn with windfalls, mostly quite green.")

Like the fruits, when cooler weather and frosts arrive, we too are braced and ripened. . . . our green and leafy and pulpy thoughts acquire color and flavor, and perchance a sweet nuttiness at last.

The ripening year,

all my thoughts break out spotted

yellow, green and brown.

September 8, 1854 

See August 17, 1851 (" For a day or two it has been quite cool, a coolness that was felt even when sitting by an open window in a thin coat on the west side of the house in the morning, and you naturally sought the sun at that hour. The coolness concentrated your thought. . . I feel as if this coolness would do me good. If it only makes my life more pensive! . . . My life flows with a deeper current.");; August 7, 1854 ("Do you not feel the fruit of your spring and summer beginning to ripen, to harden its seed within you? Do not your thoughts begin to acquire consistency as well as flavor and ripeness? . . .Already some of my small thoughts — fruit of my spring life — are ripe, like the berries which feed the first broods of birds."); January 30, 1854 ("It is for man the seasons and all their fruits exist. The winter was made to concentrate and harden and mature the kernel of his brain, to give tone and firmness and consistency to his thought. Then is the great harvest of the year, the harvest of thought.");  June 6, 1857 (“A year is made up of a certain series and number of sensations and thoughts which have their language in nature. Now I am ice, now I am sorrel. Each experience reduces itself to a mood of the mind. ”) Compare July 30 1852 ("After midsummer we have a belated feeling . . ., just as in middle age man anticipates the end of life"); August 18, 1853 (“What means this sense of lateness that so comes over one now? — now is the season of fruits; but where is our fruit?)

Now all things suggest fruit and the harvest, and flowers look late, and for some time the sound of the flail has been heard in the barns. See  September 13,1858 ("From many a barn these days I hear the sound of the flail.") See also July 31, 1856 ("I hear the distant sound of a flail, and thoughts of autumn occupy my mind, and the memory of past years."); August 18, 1856 ("It reminds me of past autumns and the lapse of time, suggests a pleasing, thoughtful melancholy, like the sound of the flail");   October 31, 1860 ("I hear the sound of the flailing . . . and gradually draw near to it from the woods, thinking many things.");

Windfalls

September 3. 

A strong wind, which blows down much fruit. R. W. E. sits surrounded by choice windfall pears.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 3, 1859


See August 29, 1852 ("The ground in orchards is covered with windfalls; imperfect fruits now fall"); September 13, 1852 ("Yesterday, it rained all day, with considerable wind, which has strewn the ground with apples and peaches, and, all the country over, people are busy picking up the windfalls"); September 17, 1858 ("The orchards are strewn with windfalls, mostly quite green. ") See also September 3, 1860 ("See on the two pear trees by the Boze cellar ripe pears, some ripe several days  . . . one was quite sweet and good")

Sparrows in flocks now about in garden

September 17. 

P. M. — Ride to Beaver Pond and beyond. 

I see several apple trees that were blown down yesterday and some pretty large elm limbs. The orchards are strewn with windfalls, mostly quite green. 

Paddle round Beaver Pond in a boat, which I calked with newspaper. It has a very boggy and generally inaccessible shore, now more inaccessible than usual on account of the rain and high water. A singularly muddy hole. 

See elecampane, quite out of bloom. 

Also the Solidago odora, which I see has just done. 

River rising fast, from yesterday’s rain. 

Cooler weather now for two or three days, so that I am glad to sit in the sun on the east side of the house mornings. 

Methinks, too, that there are more sparrows in flocks now about in garden, etc.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 17, 1858

I am glad to sit in the sun on the east side of the house mornings. See September 4, 1860 ("It is cooler these days and nights, and I move into an eastern chamber in the morning, that I may sit in the sun. September 18, 1852 ("In the forenoons I move into a chamber on the east side of the house, and so follow the sun round.”)

A southeast storm.

September 16. 

When I awake I hear the sound of steady heavy rain.

A southeast storm. 

Our peach tree limbs are broken off by it. It lasts all day, rains a great deal, and scatters many elm boughs and leaves over the street. This wind does damage out of proportion to its strength. The fact is, the trees are unprepared to resist a wind from this quarter and, being loaded with foliage and fruit, suffer so much the more. There will be many windfalls, and fruit [will] be cheap for awhile.

It rained as hard as I remember to have seen it for about five minutes at six o’clock P. M., when I was out, and then suddenly, as it were in an instant, the Wind whirled round to the westward, and clear sky appeared there and the storm ended, — which had lasted all day and part of the previous night. 

All this occurred while I was coming from the post-office. 

The street is strewn with a great many perfectly green leaves, especially of elms, and branches, large and small, also for the most part quite sound. It is remarkable that these tough and slender limbs can be thus twisted off.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September, 16, 1858

A southeast storm. The trees are unprepared to resist a wind from this quarter. See September 15, 1858 ("There is a southeast wind, with clouds, and I suspect a storm brewing. It is very rare that the wind blows from this quarter.”) See also March 24, 1860 ("During the year the wind [at Cambridge] was southwest 130 days, northwest 87, northeast 59, south 33, west 29, east 14, southeast 10, north 3 days.")

How earnestly and rapidly each creature, each flower, is fulfilling its part while its day lasts!

September 13

September 13, 2019

Yesterday, it rained all day, with considerable wind, which has strewn the ground with apples and peaches, and, all the country over, people are busy picking up the windfalls. More leaves also have fallen. Rain has as much to do with it as wind.

Ride round through Lincoln and a part of Weston and Wavland. 

The barberries, now reddening, begin to show. Asters, various shades of blue, and especially the smaller kinds of dense-flowering white ones, are more than ever by the roadsides.

In my ride I experience the pleasure of coming into a landscape where there was more distance and a bluish tinge in the horizon. The farther off the mountain which is the goal of our enterprise, the more of heaven's tint it wears. This is the chief value of a distance in landscapes.

  

The great bidens in the sun in brooks affects me as the rose of the fall. They are low suns in the brook. The golden glow of autumn concentrated, more golden than the sun. How surely this yellow comes out along the brooks in autumn. It yellows along the brook.

The earth wears different colors or liveries at different seasons. At this season, a golden blaze salutes me here from a thousand suns.

How earnestly and rapidly each creature, each flower, is fulfilling its part while its day lasts! Nature never lost a day, nor a moment. As the planet in its orbit and around its axis, so do the seasons, so does time, revolve, with a rapidity inconceivable. In the moment, in the eon, time ever advances with this rapidity. Clear the track ! The plant waits a whole year, and then blossoms the instant it is ready and the earth is ready for it, without the conception of delay.

To the conscience of the idle man, the stillness of a placid September day sounds like the din and whirl of a factory.  Only employment can still this din in the air.

I have the habit of attention to such excess that my senses get no rest, but suffer from a constant strain. When I have found myself ever looking down and confining my gaze to the flowers, I have thought it might be well to get into the habit of observing the clouds as a corrective; but no! that study would be just as bad. It is as bad to study stars and clouds as flowers and stones.

I must walk more with free senses. I must let my senses wander as my thoughts, my eyes see without looking. Carlyle said that how to observe was to look, but I say that it is rather to see, and the more you look the less you will observe. Be not preoccupied with looking. Go not to the object; let it come to you. What I need is not to look at all, but a true sauntering of the eye.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 13, 1852

The great bidens in the sun in brooks affects me . . . They are low suns in the brook. See September 13, 1859 ("The Bidens chrysanthemoides, now apparently in its prime by the river, now almost dazzles you with its great sunny disk. I feast my eyes on it annually. [Iin this is seen the concentrated heat of autumn.");See also September 12, 1859 ("The four kinds of bidens (frondosa, connata, cernua, and chrysanthemoides) abound now, but much of the Beckii was drowned by the rise of the river. Omitting this, . . . the third and fourth are conspicuous and interesting, expressing by their brilliant yellow the ripeness of the low grounds." ); September 14, 1854 ("The great bidens, the flower and ornament of the riversides at present, and now in its glory, especially at I. Rice’s shore, where there are dense beds. It is a splendid yellow — Channing says a lemon yellow — and looks larger than it is (two inches in diameter, more or less). Full of the sun. It needs a name"); September 15, 1856 ("What I must call Bidens cernua, like a small chrysanthemoides, is bristly hairy, somewhat connate and apparently regularly toothed"); September 19, 1851 ("Large-flowered bidens,or beggar-ticks,or bur-marigold, now abundant by riverside.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Great Bidens

How earnestly and rapidly each creature, each flower, is fulfilling its part while its day lasts!  See September 10, 1860 ("Almost every plant, however humble . . . has its day. March 18, 1853 ("These plants waste not a day, not a moment, suitable to their development."); August 26, 1856 ("Each humblest plant, or weed, as we call it, stands there to express some thought or mood of ours."); August 30, 1851 ("This plant acts not an obscure, but essential, part in the revolution of the seasons. May I perform my part as well!"); September 17, 1857 ("How perfectly each plant has its turn! – as if the seasons revolved for it alone."); October 22, 1858 ("When you come to observe faithfully the changes of each humblest plant, you find, it may be unexpectedly, that each has sooner or later its peculiar autumnal tint or tints") See also the air.  See April 29, 1852 ("The art of life, not having anything to do, is to do something.”). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, As the Seasons revolve

Only employment can still this din in the air.  See April 29, 1852 ("The art of life, not having anything to do, is to do something.”). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, To effect the quality of the day

Be not preoccupied with looking. See August 5, 1851 ("The question is not what you look at, but what you see."); August 21, 1851 ("You must walk sometimes perfectly free, not prying nor inquisitive, not bent upon seeing things."); November 18 1851 ("The chopper who works in the woods all day is more open in some respects to the impressions they are fitted to make than the naturalist who goes to see them. He really forgets himself, forgets to observe, and at night he dreams of the swamp, its phenomena and events. Not so the naturalist; enough of his unconscious life does not pass there. A man can hardly be said to be there if he knows that he is there, or to go there if he knows where he is going."); March 23, 1853 ("Man cannot afford to be a naturalist, to look at Nature directly, but only with the side of his eye."); June 14, 1853 ("You are in that favorable frame of mind described by De Quincey, open to great impressions, and you see those rare sights with the unconscious side of the eye, which you could not see by a direct gaze before."); April 28, 1856 ("Again, as so many times, I am reminded of the advantage to the poet, and philosopher, and naturalist, and whomsoever, of pursuing from time to time some other business than his chosen one, — seeing with the side of the eye.")

Here at this season

a golden blaze salutes me

from a thousand suns.

Idle September –

only employment can still

this din in the air.

https://tinyurl.com/HDTwhilethe-daylasts

Imperfect fruits now fall.

August 29.

A warm rain-storm in the night, with wind, and to-day it continues. The first leaves begin to fall; a few yellow ones lie in the road this morning, loosened by the rain and blown off by the wind. The ground in orchards is covered with windfalls; imperfect fruits now fall. 

We boast that we belong to the Nineteenth Century, and are making the most rapid strides of any nation. But consider how little this village does for its own culture. We have a comparatively decent system of common schools, schools for infants only, as it were, but, excepting the half-starved Lyceum in the winter, no school for ourselves. 

It is time that we had uncommon schools, that we did not leave off our education when we begin to be men. Comparatively few of my townsmen evince any interest in their own culture, how ever much they may boast of the school tax they pay. It is time that villages were universities, and their elder inhabitants the fellows, with leisure — if they are indeed so well off — to pursue liberal studies as long as they live. 

In this country the village should in many respects take the place of the nobleman who has gone by the board. It should be the patron of the fine arts. It is rich enough; it only wants the refinement. It can spend money enough on such things as farmers value, but it is thought utopian to propose spending money for things which more intelligent men know to be of far more worth. 

If we live in the Nineteenth Century, why should we not enjoy the advantages which the Nineteenth Century has to offer? Why should our life be in any respect provincial? As the nobleman of cultivated taste surrounds himself with whatever conduces to his culture, — books, paintings, statuary, etc., — so let the village do. 

This town, — how much has it ever spent directly on its own culture? To act collectively is according to the spirit of our institutions, and I am confident that, as our circumstances are more flourishing, our means are greater. 

New England can hire all the wise men in the world to come and teach her, and board them round the while, and not be provincial at all. That is the uncommon school we want. 

The one hundred and twenty-five dollars which is subscribed in this town every winter for a Lyceum is better spent than any other equal sum. Instead of noblemen, let us have noble towns or villages of men. This town has just spent sixteen thousand dollars for a town-house. Suppose it had been proposed to spend an equal sum for something which will tend far more to refine and cultivate its inhabitants, a library, for instance. We have sadly neglected our education. We leave it to Harper & Brothers and Redding & Co.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 29, 1852

The first leaves begin to fall loosened by the rain and blown off by the wind. See August 28, 1858 ("When the wind stirs after the rain, leaves that were prematurely ripe or withered begin to strew the ground on the leeward side.. . .These are among the first-fruits of the leafy harvest.")

Harper & Brothers,  founded in 1817 as J. & J. Harper,  was  a book publisher  also known for its popular periodical  Harper's New Monthly Magazine (1850) and later Harper's Weekly (1857), and Harper's Bazar (1867). ~ Wikipedia

Redding & Co wa a bookseller based in Boston. In 1850 it published speeches on the subject of slavery by Horace Mann and Daniel Webster.